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Soulive has been around for over 25 years and I first got into their music in the early ’00s with their second and third albums, ‘Turn It Out’ (2000) and ‘Doin’ Something’ (2001.) They represent(ed) the best of a new generation of organ trios, with brothers Alan (drums) and Neal (keys) Evans joined by Eric Krasno on guitar. Soulive developed their funky style in the wake of arguably the least funky decade (1990s) of the last 50 years. The band actually led to my discovery of Lettuce, the leading funk band of the 2000s and a cousin to Soulive, withContinue Reading

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In: BANDS, FESTIVALS, GroundUP Music Festival, Snarky Puppy

GroundUP Music Festival 2026 just announced its exceptionally strong lineup. This year will be the 10th annual, and the organizers Michael League and Paul Lehr pulled out all the stops, bringing in Flying Lotus, Patrice Rushen, Rickie Lee Jones, Bilal, and Isaiah Sharkey, among others. Let’s start with the connection to the recently departed and heavily revered D’Angelo. In a recent YouTube interview, Michael League stated, “I don’t know that you can play music in 2025 without being influenced by D’Angelo even if you never heard D’Angelo. Whenever you go somewhere and you hear someone playing drums in this way,Continue Reading

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For most of 2025, I reveledin the experience of attending the Somni recording sessions in Utrecht back in January. Listening to the album released in late November only increased my amazement at the beauty of the whole album—so much so that I just splurged on a Dolby Atmos speaker system. The enormity of the album is captured in my review (click here) and in my making it the FunkCity.net Album of the Year so I won’t rehash those accolades here. One of the fascinating parts of the recording session and the recording itself was that all four Snarky Puppy drummersContinue Reading

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Thursday and Friday will have the festival in high gear, featuring national and regional acts with a range of styles, including funk, punk, boogaloo, jam, grass, and so many more. On top of that, the festival features four great artists at large. Joe Marcinek will sling his guitar with several acts, and the Sooza horns will be bopping around from set to set. On top of that we have the queen, Kanika Moore, and Alex Steele on vocals bouncing from stage to stage. Let’s take a look at who’s on the Friday and Saturday lineups and mark your calendars forContinue Reading

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FunkCity.net is pleased to name ‘Cook’ from Lettuce as my Funk Album of the Year. In a year when there were several standout choices (see my Best of 2025 Coverage), ‘Cook’ was my favorite. It mixed hat tips to legends like the tunes “Rising to the “Top”—Frankie Beverly and “Keep “On”—Tower of Power, with relaxing vibe cuts like “Breathe” and lots more in between. The band has now been around for more than 20 years and is hotter and funkier than ever. In fact, they had a second album, ‘Lettuce with the Colorado Symphony,’ that came out earlier in the yearContinue Reading

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FunkCity.net is pleased to name ‘Somni’ from Snarky Puppy as my Album of the Year (AOTY). At the risk of being presumptuous, I had it as the odds-on favorite to win right after attending the recording sessions for the album in Utrecht, Netherlands, in January 2025. It was simply that magnificent—not only for this year but over the long run. I feel that this album will be listed as one of the greats long into the future and will likely win a minimum of one Grammy in 2027 (it was released after this year’s cutoff). The enormous effort of theContinue Reading

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Whippersnap Music and Arts Festival is back in 2026 for its third year at Florida Sands Music Ranch (FSMR). It now includes a Wednesday Preparty and continues with the Thursday to Saturday main festival. Whippersnap has quickly become one of my favorite winter festivals as it’s loaded with jam and funk music that are right in my sweet spot. It brings big-time, world-class music, a fabulous location and a really cozy, intimate setting with some of the coolest people around! It’s set in a great ranch campground and has two stages of music at alternating times so you never haveContinue Reading

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In: Aisle 5, BLOG POSTS, City Winery, GroundUP Music Festival, Lettuce, Smith's Olde Bar, Suwannee Hulaween, Terminal West, The New Mastersounds, Variety Playhouse, Whippersnap Music and Arts Festival

This year was epic for my live music journey having seen well over 200 sets of music and recorded over 80 live performances. The first half of the year had an incredible run of live shows starting with the recording sessions for Snarky Puppy’s album with the Metropole Orkest, “Somni” in Utrecht, Netherlands. That one was recorded professionally by a dozen or so cameras and the videos are being released one by one. After that, I had an mammoth string of music starting with the GroundUP Music Festival in Miami Beach, rolling right into my first Jam Cruise and thenContinue Reading

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FunkCity.net celebrated a vibrant 2025, highlighted by attending various concerts and reviewing 17 standout albums. The year’s highlights include naming Snarky Puppy’s “Somni” Album of the Year and Lettuce’s “Cook” as Funk Album of the Year. The year concludes with strong submissions from various talented artists across jazz, funk, and soul genres.Continue Reading

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When I want to taste some funk, I listen to Lettuce ‘Cook‘! That’s the latest album the preminent funk torchbearers, Lettuce. Cook is, in my view, one of the top funk albums of the year and worthy of a Grammy. The continuously ups the ante and this album follows in the traditions of Tower of Power, Earth Wind and Fire, Frankie Beverly and Maze and Marvin Gaye while still blazing its own trail. Traces of the past mixed with heavy doses of future funk keep this album fresh through many servings. As usual, the tunes are mostly instrumental and they’reContinue Reading